Residents surveyed over speeding in Sutton Common Road

Your local councillors recently carried out a house-to-house survey of speeding on Sutton Common Road. This was in response to ongoing concerns about speeding traffic, which were raised at the local committee last year.

We worked closely with the local police safer neighbourhood team who took their speed-gun out on a couple of occasions, stopping many speeding vehicles.

In the past few months we have pushed for a pedestrian crossing, which appeared to be the favoured option with local residents. Council officers identified a location for a crossing in the central stretch of the road however an official planning consultation of a small number of residents who would be personally affected led to objections.

Councillors then resolved not to give up but to go back to the drawing board, because we recognise that speeding is a serious issues and won’t go away!

Myself and my colleague Cllr Marlene Heron (pictured above) surveyed residents last month, and the results show a clear preference (84%) for a pedestrian crossing… in the central stretch of the road!

There were 45 responses, which is a good return by normal local survey standards. 81% believed speeding on the road is a problem with the majority regarding the problem as ‘very bad.’ 83% believe is constitutes a danger to pedestrians.

Residents were asked to rank a number of options to tackle the problem by preference. After pedestrian crossings the second favourite option was an LED sign to warn drivers of their speed, followed by more use of police speed guns. All three options were chosen by over half those surveyed.

Just under half of those surveyed picked more ‘slow down’ signs (4th); a raised platform (5th), reducing the speed limit to 20mph (6th), and speed bumps (7th).

Chicanes and pinch-points lagged way behind. A tiny minority (5%) said no action was necessary. Please find full results below.

I believe the survey results show clearly that speeding remains a serious problem on Sutton Common Road and action is needed to tackle it.

As pedestrian crossings are the clear choice of residents, we have gone back to officers and asked them to suggest a new location for a crossing, preferably around the middle stretch. We will keep residents updated.